The Shadow and the Star (9 page)

"I am not authorized—"

"Cut line, Inspector!" A man in the back, just in front of Leda, raised his voice in disgust. "This is your territory, isn't it? Don't you know what goes on here?"

"What of the young boys we saw?" someone else yelled. "Did you take 'em in as suspects?"

"The minor inhabitants of the house are not suspected in the robbery. They will be questioned as to what they may know that relates to it."

"Then what'll you do with 'em? Give 'em back to Oxslip and Sal?"

The inspector's jaw worked. He frowned fiercely and did not answer the question.

"What's the point of it all?" the man in front of Leda demanded. "Is it blackmail, or an attempt to shut down Oxslip's? Did the police arrange it?"

Inspector Ruby hesitated, and then said, "I cannot speculate on that point."

"Good job if they did fix it," the man said, and got a round of approval while the baby howled. "If you can't catch 'em in the act, root 'em out as you can, I say! Those boys-it's foul, by God!"

The inspector seemed to recall Leda for the first time. He looked up at her directly, and then raised his hands, brushing away the flood of questions. "That will be all, gentlemen! There are ladies present. Take yourselves to the Yard and ask what you will. We've police business to attend to here."

"Don't you, though!" a young man cried, cocking a thumb toward the cell where the baby still wailed and sobbed, muffled now as the maternity nurse swaddled it in linen. But the inspector and Sergeant MacDonald began shoving reporters out the door. Some left, followed by more evidently eager to keep up with their rivals, but others lingered, still trying to ask questions.

Mrs. Fullerton-Smith brought the infant out of the cell.

As Leda climbed down from her perch on the wooden bench, she found the tiny bundle pushed into her arms. "The cloth is donated by the Ladies' Committee of Marylebone Park," Mrs. Fullerton-Smith informed her. "You may keep it, but we ask that you sterilize it and pass it to another needy applicant when it is no longer of use to the infant. The mother is resting quietly, as you see. In an hour or two, when she feels up to it, she may hold him. Mrs. Lay ton and I must return to the medical officer, as there are several other patients who need attention this evening. If any excessive bleeding occurs, send to us immediately."

Leda was about to correct Mrs. Fullerton-Smith's obvious impression that Leda had some personal connection to Pammy, when she overheard the nurse giving particulars to Sergeant MacDonald, who wrote them laboriously in the record book. "Mrs. Dawkins' in Jacob's Island," the nurse said, for Pammy's place of residence.

"Oh, no—" Leda tried to dodge round Mrs. Fullerton-Smith and her monologue of instructions. "Sergeant MacDonald—she doesn't live there!"

Her protest was lost amid the insistent questions of two reporters, who kept asking Sergeant MacDonald if he would unwrap the crown. Meanwhile, Mrs. Fullerton-Smith and the nurse were packing their grip. The nurse pulled her bloody apron over her head and stuffed it away. The baby began to wail again, and Leda looked down into the screwed-up eyes and open mouth.

"Hush, hush," she murmured ineffectually, patting the back of the bundle. The baby only screwed tighter and wailed more piercingly, making a frightful face, all mottled red and white. Leda caught at the nurse's arm as she sailed past after Mrs. Fullerton-Smith, but both ladies were gone before she could utter more than an incoherent objection.

Inspector Ruby and his chief walked out, fending off reporters. While Sergeant MacDonald was occupied with a particularly insistent journalist, one of the others sidled up next to Leda, where the wrapped shawl lay on the bench. He tugged at the edge of the paisley, rolling it free.

The Eastern crown of gold and enamel overturned onto the bench, a peaked helmet like a small, round temple, thickly studded with diamonds that culminated in one huge ruby set into a white shell.

The reporter began making quick sketches in his notebook, until Sergeant MacDonald gave an indignant shout and shoved him away. "What're you about, now? Get on with you; out of here, all of you!" He pushed the reporter through the door, dragging another along with him. They went protesting loudly. Leda could hear their voices ringing in the street as they detained Sergeant MacDonald on the steps.

Not knowing what else to do, she went into the cell and knelt beside Pammy. "How are you feeling?" she asked. "Would you like to see him?"

The girl squeezed her eyes shut as hard as the baby did. "I don't want it!" she muttered. "Take it off somewheres."

"The nurse said you might hold him in a hour or so."

"I won't."

Leda looked down at the girl's sullen face. Pammy opened her eyes and lifted her hand, pushing weakly at Leda's arms.

"I won't take it," she said. "I hate it. Go away!"

Leda got up and went back to the bench. The tiny newborn wail just kept on and on. She sat down next to the crown and peered into the infant face. It was ugly, it truly was, all wet mouth and wrinkled skin, and its mother didn't want it.

Leda gave the unattractive bundle a hug, which only made it cry louder. She stared at the beautiful gold and rubied crown—and began, for no reason at all, to weep.

Hawaii, 1871

Little Kai loved to swim. She squealed at the long breakers
that rolled across the reef at Waikiki, and beat her baby hands against Samuel's shoulders.

"Far! Fargo!" she demanded. "Big!"

So he kept his arm around her and plowed into the mild surf, a little farther out than most of the crowd of Hawaiian children. The long skirts of her bathing costume floated and swept against his bare chest with each wave as he bounced her up above the foam. She laughed and shrieked and sometimes he ducked her instead of rising over, so that they both came up with water streaming off their faces and their mouths full of salty bitterness.

"Down go!" she cried. "Down go!"

They took huge breaths, Kai blowing out her cheeks and pursing up her mouth comically. Samuel sank beneath the clear water with her firmly in his arms. The force of a wave rolled over them, carrying them a few feet back toward the shore, and the sand beneath his feet shifted. He squeezed Kai's chubby body to signal "up," and she kicked madly. He pushed off the sand, exploding out of the water, carrying Kai high in the air in his arms.

She screeched with pleasure. Another wave went past, catching them in a rush of noise and white foam. Samuel shook water off his hair. As his ears cleared, he heard other shrieks beyond Kai's. He looked toward the beach and saw figures splashing out of the water.

"
He mano
!" The cry came to him amid the surge of another wave. "
He mano! He mano nui loa
!"

He saw it, a dark slice of fin breaking out of the surf, a murky shape, fast-moving, as long as one of the great boards that the Hawaiians rode on the surf. The shark cut between him and Kai and the beach. Samuel was distantly aware of the crowd gathering, of screaming, people running along the sand.

Afterward, he remembered mostly the great calm that descended over him as the shark turned and moved swiftly toward them.

He lifted Kai out of the water onto his shoulders. She gripped his hair painfully, still laughing, beating her feet against his chest. He clamped his hands on her ankles and held them still. She was squealing something, but he wasn't listening. Above the waves, above the thin wail of panic from the beach and the shouts of the men as they launched the canoe, he heard something more.

He heard his song, the dark song of his brother the shark.

He stood still and listened.

The surf hid the fin for an instant, lifted his feet from the sand and brought him down gently. He watched the huge shape move past a yard away. The high-pitched sound of Kai calling for her mother rang in his ears, remote, like a distant train whistle, but his mind was full of the song.

It held him silent, soundless; a fixed rock of coral, a lifeless piece of driftwood—a passive thing, unafraid. The shark glided past, turned and came again, nightmare huge. He listened to the song. He felt the shark's slow curiosity—the deep and mindless hunger in it, but he was peaceful and part of the surf, nothing that it wanted.

Kai had stopped calling. She sat still, too, perched on his shoulders, her fingers pinched hard in his hair. Through the air he heard shouts and percussions—the men in the canoe beat the water with their paddles, coming fast and hard.

The shark made a sliding turn, passing within touching distance. Samuel watched it slip by, saw the somber gray hide, the fin, the tail, and then suddenly it veered sharply back out to sea, away from the oncoming outrigger.

The canoe seemed huge, rolling down upon them on the back of a swell. The paddles slapped the water violently. Samuel felt the first shot of fear—not from the shark, but from the threat of the wooden weapons and the savagery of the shouts. The outrigger seemed ready to crash against his side, but with startling skill the Hawaiian in the stern turned the canoe against the waves and it passed behind him. Someone plucked a screaming Kai off his shoulders.

Brutally strong arms grabbed at him. He turned and jumped, blundering up against the hard polished wood, banging his thighs and knees. For a wild moment the outrigger on the opposite side lifted from the water and the whole canoe threatened to come over, but then he was hauled aboard, collapsing against a white-shirted chest, aware of English words yelled in his ear.

The words thanked God, and thanked him; Lord Gryphon gripped Samuel back against himself as if he could not let go. Facing them in the canoe, Kai squirmed in the brown arms of a Hawaiian, squealing, "Dad
dy
,
daddy
!" and trying to break free.

The voice swore close to his ear, the arms around him so tight they hurt. "Samuel, thank you, thank the Lord for you, God love you, boy, you're a bloody damned natural-born God-given hero—" The voice kept talking, kept muttering fiercely on and on, and finally Kai got away and floundered against Samuel's lap, and her father gathered them both up together, and when the canoe ran onto the beach he lifted them both out and still wouldn't let go.

Lady Tess was waiting, standing in the water with the hem of her skirt trailing out, dragging in the slide of surf onto the beach. Her face was streaked with tears, her dark hair flying free of its pins. She jerked Kai up into her arms, knelt and buried her face against Samuel's wet shoulder and hair. The swash rolled away beneath them, draining sand from under his toes as it retreated. He stumbled a little to keep his feet.

"Steady there, son." The firm hand still gripped his shoulder. Samuel looked up at Lord Gryphon's face. The sun blazed off the man's blond hair; he was tall and pleasant and exalted and he'd never called Samuel "son" before. He was grinning. Samuel felt his own face change, felt the shaky, uncertain smile. People crowded around, half-naked Hawaiians still dripping from the surf, respectable
haoles
, white-skinned and dressed up to their chins in dark clothes and hats, even Lady Tess' Oriental butler who had come with them in the carriage to serve Sunday picnic at Waikiki.